WESTERLY, R.I. — In the winter, Misquamicut looks a bit like a ghost town. But this week, a team of construction workers is busy constructing the frame of a new beachfront house at 399 Atlantic Ave.

WESTERLY — In the winter, Misquamicut looks a bit like a ghost town, with shuttered ice cream shops and clam shacks, empty parking lots and driveways, and snow covering the sand dunes.

But this week, a team of construction workers is busy constructing the frame of a new beachfront house at 399 Atlantic Ave.

The former house on the site was destroyed by superstorm Sandy, and the land was sold to new owners who are rebuilding a three-bedroom house there.

Misquamicut was hit hard by Sandy in October 2012, and rebuilding storm-damaged houses accounted for most of the new building activity in Westerly last year, according to town planner Marilyn Shelman.

Although it is still far from robust, Rhode Island’s residential building business showed improvement in 2013, with 817 single-family building permits for the year, up 20 percent from 2012. It is still a low number compared with 1999, when 2,639 permits were issued, or even 2003, when there were 1,984 permits. But it is an improvement from the recent past, including 2011 (575 permits) and 2012 (682).

Looking at the permits on a city and town basis, seven communities accounted for nearly half of the permits issued statewide in 2013, according to statistics from the Rhode Island Builders Association (using data from the Census Bureau): South Kingstown (77), Westerly (66), Cumberland (50), Warwick (47), Lincoln (46), Middletown (45) and Cranston (43).

Planners in these communities said that in some cases, builders were finishing up work on projects approved before the recession. In other cases, the surge was attributed to waterfront building projects — either rebuilding after Sandy, as in Westerly, or tearing down smaller cottages to make way for larger houses, as has occurred in Warwick, according to planning director William DePasquale.

South Kingstown Planning Director Vincent Murray said Wakefield Meadows, a 55-plus townhouse development, which was approved for 142 units, has accounted for much of the town’s recent building activity. It is a Pulte Homes development, and Pulte has been building the homes to order, according to company spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga. “We carry very little spec,” she said.

The Wakefield Meadows townhouses are priced in the $300,000s and $400,000s, have two bedrooms and 2 or 21/2 baths, and range in size from 1,990 to 2,186 square feet of living space.

The development is nearly complete with fewer than 30 townhouses left to sell, according to Geoff Rendall, vice president of Pulte Homes New England. “We’ve enjoyed good sales there,” about 20 to 25 townhouses a year for the past few years, he said.

There were other smaller subdivisions built in South Kingstown, including East Matunuck Farms (five permits) and others that were “approved a while back,” Murray said.

Cumberland’s director of planning, Kelley Morris, said there has not been a single large development that accounted for the town’s residential building in 2013, but there were several smaller projects scattered across town, including Berkeley Commons, two-bedroom townhouses off Mendon Road, developed by E.A. McNulty Real Estate. The company website says that prices start in the mid-$200,000s.

Lincoln, too, experienced growth in scattered sites across town, according to Town Planner Albert Ranaldi Jr. He said the most concentrated growth was a nine-unit condo development across from the YMCA on Breakneck Hill Road.

Middletown Building Inspector Chris Costa said that most new construction in 2013 consisted of small subdivisions at different locations throughout town. He said a number of townhouses were built last year at Bay Ridge, a 60-unit, gated, age-restricted (55-plus) community being developed by Oldport Homes at 345 Forest Ave.

Communities with the fewest number of single-family building permits in 2013 included Central Falls (0), Foster (2), West Greenwich (5), West Warwick (5), Pawtucket (6), East Providence (6) and Johnston (6), according to RIBA.